Undergraduate Medical Students’ Preferred Choices of Learning Style, Teaching Pedagogies and Assessment methods in the Ophthalmology Module at National Defence University of Malaysia

Abstract

Objectives: The aims of this study were to identify the students’ preferred choices of learning style, to determine their preferred teaching pedagogies and assessment methods in the Ophthalmology module of undergraduate medical course.
 Materials and Methods: This prospective study was conducted among 97 consecutive medical students of year 4 Ophthalmology posting in the Faculty of Medicine and Defence Health, National Defence University of Malaysia, over a period of two academic years. Each student was given a structured questionnaire, after completing their clinical rotation posting examination, for his/her responses to determine their preferred choices of learning style, teaching pedagogies and assessment methods in the Ophthalmology module. The students were asked to circle their preferred choice of the responses given for each question for the above mentioned three methods. The data was analyzed using SPSS software and the frequency of variables were expressed as percentage.
 Results: Out of 97 consecutive students in this study, females were slightly more (52.6%) than males, and the mean age was 23.5 years (range 23-24 years). A combination of various methods of learning style that included reading, hearing, seeing, and practicing of skills was used by 75.3% of students. Majority of the students preferred their method of learning by reading the lecture notes/handouts (68%). The most preferred method of students’ learning by hearing was case discussion (53.6%); while for learning by vision (seeing) it was clinics session (60.8%). More than 3/4 of the students preferred to learn their practicing skills on real patients (83.5%). The most preferred teaching method by the students was bed side teaching (52.6%); and in lectures/seminars it was using both power point presentation and explaining on the board with marker pen (71.1%). In the end of posting theory examination, 45.4% of students preferred assessment method which was a combination of multiple choice (true/false) questions and single best answer questions, while in the objective structured clinical examination it was a combination of interactive station with patient and non-interactive stations without patients (48.5%).
 Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study, an effective learning and teaching environment for the students during their two weeks duration Ophthalmology posting will be modified by the educators in the future academic years so that the students will be encouraged for better performance in their end of posting examination as well as in the final professional examination. Every tool of assessment used in the medical course should be made clear to the students and the students should practice them during the postings period, in order to perform better during the evaluation in the examination.